La Desenchantee (1990)

May 27, 1998

FILM REVIEW; When Maman Gets Ill, Pretty Daughter Gets a Bill

By STEPHEN HOLDEN

Published: May 27, 1998

Only in a certain kind of earnest French movie are you likely to find a beautiful 17-year-old girl reciting the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud and solemnly pondering its relevance to her own life. According to Beth (Judith Godreche), the seething central character of Benoit Jacquot's melancholy film, ''La Desenchantee,'' Rimbaud grew up disillusioned and spent his life searching futilely for something that would enchant him. In her premature awareness of life's pressures and limitations and her urge to flee the family nest, Beth thinks of herself as a spiritual sister of the Rimbaud she imagines.

''La Desenchantee,'' which was made in 1990, five years before the director's small tour de force ''A Single Girl,'' which played in New York last year, is a lot like the later film in its uncannily rich evocation of a headstrong young woman's turbulent inner life. The movie, which opens today at Film Forum, explores three crucial days during which Beth reluctantly decides she must leave.

In the opening scene, Beth's possessive young boyfriend whom she refers to as ''Whatsisname'' (Malcom Conradt) -- the only person she has ever slept with -- facetiously suggests she go to bed with the ugliest man she can find, the better to appreciate what he's offering. Beth takes offense and goes to a nightclub where she picks up a spoiled, unattractive youth who takes her back to an elegant house where his mother is entertaining some friends.

When Whatsisname tries to reclaim Beth, the two get into a fist fight that is broken up by a passing stranger, an older writer named Alphonse (Marcel Bozonnet), who collects knives and who befriends Beth without trying to seduce her. Their relationship is a mutual cat and mouse game in which neither ends up being caught.

The event that drives Beth to leave home is a desperate request from her bedridden mother (Therese Liotard), who appears to be seriously ill with an unidentified malady. The middle-age businessman known both as Uncle and as Sugar Daddy (Yvan Desny), who has been paying the bills for years, has started lusting for Beth. Now it behooves the daughter to save the family from poverty by sleeping with Sugar Daddy so the checks don't stop. Like all the other ugly elements of Beth's life, the movie treats this request with a devastating nonchalance. It's just the way of the world.

At moments ''La Desenchantee'' seems frustratingly indecisive and elliptical, and it also leaves you wanting to know much more about Beth's mother, a frail, aging beauty, and how she came to be so helpless and dependent she has to ask her own daughter to prostitute herself.

But those are the prices the movie pays by looking at the world exclusively through its main character's eyes. The most disturbing aspects of Beth's situation are things she takes for granted. If Beth is precociously sophisticated in some ways, the film shows how innocent she is in others. In scenes in which she plays with her kid brother, Remi (Thomas Salsman), the part of her that's still a child surfaces touchingly.

This fragile film hangs almost entirely on Ms. Godreche's strong but understated performance of a young woman forced by her circumstances (including the curse of her own beauty) to confront the world with an attitude of suspicion, sullen refusal and, yes, disenchantment.

LA DESENCHANTEE
Written (in French, with English subtitles) and directed by Benoit Jacquot; director of photography, Caroline Champetier; edited by Dominique Auvray; music by Jorge Arriacada; produced by Philippe Carcassonne; released by First Run Features. At the Film Forum, 209 Houston Street, South Village. Running time: 78 minutes. This film is not rated.